A Point of View: Mearsheimer and Walt in Israel

The title of the event is: "The Israel Lobby - Helping or Hurting Israel?" It will take place at Beit Sokolov in Tel Aviv on Thursday, June 12. The presenters are American professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.

A few preliminary comments are in order. Israel is truly a democratic country where freedom of expression is a prized value, not something to pay lip service to. So the very fact that two professors who for several years have been lambasting Israel and American Jews all over the world are welcomed to Israel, speaks volumes.

Secondly, the subject of the Israel lobby and its impact in America is a legitimate matter for examination. It is always helpful to take a look at the institutions of Israel and American Jews and to ask questions about how they operate and their value to the Jewish State.

Unfortunately, despite their credentials - Mearsheimer is professor of government at the University of Chicago, Walt is at the Kennedy School at Harvard - these professors are not in the business of a serious consideration about the impact of the lobby. Instead, the title of the event is deceptive because, it leaves the impression of an objective analysis of the issue. In fact, Mearsheimer and Walt, as I write in my book The Deadliest Lie: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control, are as far as one could be from objective analysis. They are about a complete distortion of Israel's history and role in the Middle East. And, most disturbing, they are about propagating, in sophisticated grab, old and destructive myths about Jewish power, loyalty and conspiracies.

Since they are in Israel, and since surely they will put on their best face to appear more respectable than their writings, it is useful to make several points.

In their book, the authors are careful to avoid the most direct stereotypes, generalizations, motives attributed to the Israel lobby in the original paper. They repeat that they are not questioning the right of the lobby to be active, like other lobbies. They claim they are not anti-Israel or questioning its right to exist. They are not saying that those who work on behalf of Israel in the US are deliberately betraying their country. They are not saying that the war in Iraq was caused by the Israel lobby. And so on.

The problem is that these denials and clarifications, clearly inserted as a preemptive response to criticisms of their original paper, do not change the thrust of the presentation.  The old saying "if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it must be a duck" applies here.

Let's deal with some of their claims which they make to soften the criticisms of their work:

Israel has a right to exist -- As William Grimes pointed out in his New York Times book review "the effect of their book is to leave it dangling by a moral and strategic thread."

Not anti-Israel -- Every event in the Israel-Arab conflict over six decades is interpreted in a fashion to put all or the preponderance of blame on Israel. One does not have to be a Zionist to recognize the complexity of the problems such as the roots of the refugee problem in 1948 or the collapse of Camp David in 2000. The demonizing of Israel is transparent.

Just presenting an honest view of America policymaking in the Middle East which goes unheard -- As has been noted by several critics, Mearsheimer and Walt did not interview any current or recent Administration or State Department figures. Had they done so, they would have heard the kinds of comments from people like Ambassador Ned Walker, Former Secretary of State George Shultz, and others when learning of Mearsheimer and Walt's description of US policy making.

Walker, an old State Department Middle East hand said after the original paper appeared that he could not recognize the way policy was actually made from the description by Mearsheimer and Walt. It bore no resemblance to the messy, multi-sourced influences in the real world.

George Shultz, in the introduction to my book said, "So, at every level, those who blame Israel and its Jewish supporters for US policies they do not support are wrong. They are wrong because, to begin with, support for Israel is in our best interests. They are also wrong because Israel and its supporters have the right to try to influence US policy. And they are wrong because the US government is responsible for the policies it adopts, not any other state or any of the myriad lobbies and groups that battle daily --- sometimes with lies – to win America's support."

The truth is US policy results from a complicated series of influences both inside and outside government. Supporters of Israel are significant voices and we are proud of that but any suggestion that we are the dominant influence belies the real complexity.

US policy is completely one-sided toward Israel -- Fortunately, and for good strategic and moral reasons, the US is a strong supporter of Israel. But Mearsheimer and Walt fall into that anti-Israel assumption so prevalent in parts of the Arab world and elsewhere which holds that if the US is pro-Israel it must be anti-Arab. 

In fact, US policy has always supported moderate forces in the region, whether they be Israeli or Arab. During the Cold War, the US goal was to strengthen anti-Soviet Arab forces in the region and saw a strong Israel as part of that effort.  There was nothing anti-Arab about that. Today, the US supports moderate forces against radical Islamists in the region. Israel receives support but so do moderate Arab such as Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and moderate Palestinians. There is nothing anti-Arab about that. Even President Bush's June 2002 speech, cited as possibly the most pro-Israel address by an American president, was not anti-Palestinian. It laid out a vision of a Palestinian state living side-by-side of Israel and called on the Palestinians to find moderate leaders to lead them there with US help. There is nothing anti-Arab about that. 

US policy, unlike Mearsheimer and Walt's accusations, is not a zero-sum gain at all.

American Jewish leadership is right-wing and monolithic -- In fact, the vast majority of American Jewish organizations and surely the most significant ones, whether ADL, AIPAC, AJC, Hadassah, the Union of Reform Judaism et.al. all support a two-state solution for the region.  Here, too, the fact that all these groups reject Palestinian terrorism and support Israel is demanding moderate Palestinian positions is taken as being right-wing and uncompromising.

The media and campuses don't allow true open discussion and debate on the conflict because of Israel lobby pressure -- Absurd on its face. Turn on the TV any night, read compare newspapers all over the country and one will hear a wide-range of views about the conflict, some even over the-top is its criticism and bias toward Israel. This charge of the Israel lobby stifling discussion is one of the most insidious and fake ones in their paper and book. It is of course strategically brilliant because it tries to put the Jewish community on the defensive: criticizing them proves their point.

Not saying that Israel lobby is intending to serve Israeli interest against American -- By setting up the straw man that everything Israel does is evidently wrong, that US support for Israel is over-the-top and hurts America strategically and morally, and that that policy is simply a product of the influence of the Israel lobby, their protest that they are not accusing the lobby of deliberately working against America leaves one cold. If things are so obvious, then the lobby must know full well that they are hurting America and they pursue their approach in any case for one simple reason: they are loyal to Israel against their own country.

Ultimately, the critique of Mearsheimer and Walt must not be limited to the distortions of events and cause and effect, but also to their questioning of the motives of those who support Israel in this country. The qualifying words, the softer tone do not relieve us of the belief that Mearsheimer and Walt continue to foster an image of American Jews that fits the classic conspiracy theories of Jewish power, disloyalty, and betrayal.